The Light In All Of This
by LyricOcean
Summary: Chloe and Victoria drive to escape the onset of some form of apocalypse. Thoughts and ponderings from Victoria.


Rain.

Not the heavy rain, but rain nonetheless. I can't see it because the streetlamps don't work anymore, but I know it's there. I can hear it all around. Gentle yet insisting fingers drumming against the roof, the windows. Splashing up in every pothole we hit. Making me shiver though I can't say I'm truly cold. I'm wrapped in blankets, nose pressed to the mattress, trying to sleep. Thank god the back seats in my car fold down or I'd be napping on leather and seatbelts. The mattress just fit in as it was. Small luxuries like that are the last nice things I have left.

Well. Almost the last.

I can't sleep, so instead I watch her. Now that I try to see, my eyes adjust to the darkness fast. It's funny how quickly we humans adapt. She's sitting in the driving seat, steering one handed, frowning slightly. Shadows cast over her face from the lights on the dashboard. I wonder what she's thinking of. I hope, selfishly, that I'm in her thoughts. I remember she was so hesitant to drive my car at first but the novelty has worn off fast. We didn't want to take my car - money attracts attention, and attention was the last thing we wanted these days - but her rust-drizzled old pickup truck was too far away and we couldn't risk it. So here we are. Taking turns sleeping and driving, trying to get as much distance from the world as possible. Stopping for gas only when necessary. Eating the last of some ancient marshmallows I found in the glove box. Driving faster when we see people, which isn't often. There are no cars on the road, not that we've seen. We'd probably be dead if there were.

She glances back, sees me staring. Gives me a tired smile. "You're supposed to be sleeping," she tells me.

"I am sleeping."

"No you're not."

"It's raining."

"Yeah, it is. Bitch to drive in. I'm scared to have the headlights on but I can't risk running us off the road."

"You're doing fine." I was going to say that a long time ago I would have preferred to tear her down, to insult her, but then I remembered that it wasn't such a long time ago at all. A few weeks at most, in fact. Time is cruel like that.

We're silent a while longer. I look out front. I can just distinguish the raindrops coming down the windshield. They look like tendrils, a virulent force spreading, engulfing the car. We used to view death as a slow and creeping force like this but I can't believe that anymore. I've seen what death can do and I know how fast it can come. The windscreen wipers keep pushing them away but that can't last forever. I always thought it was a meaningless cliche, to say that screams could haunt you, but I don't think that anymore. Not when the scream you hear is a ghost in itself.

There are things you can forget and then there is that.

"What are you thinking of?" she asks.

I don't reply. Silence is its own answer. She understands. She's still driving. Barely kept together herself. We're both doing this for each other.

Finally, because I'm never going to get to sleep, I ask, "Would you like me to drive?"

"I'm handling it fine."

"Do you feel like you could sleep?"

"No. Do you?"

"No."

She nods, eyes still on the road. Nothing else to say. "Love you," she says after a pause.

"Love you too, Chloe."

"We need to stop for gas soon. We're running on fumes."

"Is there a place nearby?"

"I don't know." She scratches her nose, expression unreadable.

"What do we do if we run out?"

"Not much we can do."

"Do you think they'll…?"

"We drove pretty far away. If we keep the blankets over our heads anything looking in won't be able to tell we're people. I hope. I guess that's the best we can do."

This fills me with ice cold dread, but I say nothing. For the next half-hour or so I lie on my stomach, watching her and the rain, sometimes thinking and sometimes not. At one horrible point my mind goes back to the day it started. The trauma cementing the occasion in my mind as a single tableaux. The all-consuming blackness everywhere from choking smoke; the… things, whatever they were; Chloe's ashen, broken face, her arms grabbing my shoulders too tight, screaming _"Now! We have to go now!"_ though her voice had seemed a thousand miles away.

The car slows. "Here we go," she warns. The car stops. A moment of silence between us. For the loss of gas, for the loss of so many lives, for the premature mourning of our own lives. Two girls encased in what could be a chrysalis or a tomb or perhaps both, staring into the black wondering how things came to be this way. Wondering what comes next. Chloe looks to the sky for stars I know aren't there anymore. If I wanted to romanticise the situation I would say I could see the universe in her eyes, but those are just tears. Tears of pain, of desperation, of hopelessness. The universe is nothing but an abstract concept. There is only us, and the car, and everything outside the car. And that is our universe. And that is why she is crying.

She turns the key in the ignition but does not remove it, and climbs back over the seats to where I am. Snuggles up in blankets with me, holds me tighter than she ever has before. It's the only way I can truly sleep anymore. She smells of sweat but her skin is cold. She hugs me and she breathes and we communicate with our skin. _Take my heart, it's only beating for you._ Where had I read that? Not that it matters.

I want to tell her that I love her, that she means the world to me, that if we survive until tomorrow morning it will be the best thing to ever happen because it will have meant I had more time to spend with her. But she knows these things already.

I lie in Chloe's arms listening. Waiting. Nothing comes save the onset of sleep.

I feel peace, or something close to it. At least we're warm. At least she's here.

For better or for worse, I close my eyes.


End file.
